


unsteady

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Character Study, Dream Sequence, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 18:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7475916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they both have nightmares, sometimes. most of the time. more often than not.</p><p>(A brief look into Vax and Percy's dreams.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	unsteady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [renardroi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renardroi/gifts).



they both have nightmares, sometimes. most of the time. more often than not.

percy flees the briarwoods, sixteen and barely a man, bruised and bleeding and broken under the tender touch of ripley’s hands as he stumbles through the snow. he pulls his sister along behind him by the wrist, his sister- except it’s not- because his sister never had dark, silken hair, and pointed ears, and eyes like the glassy-black water of a brackish pool-

vax goes down just like cassandra did, though, despite not being her, arrows through his back and shoulders in a mockery of the wings he now wears. his blood stains the snow red, brilliant and ruby, and though percy knows he ran- knows he _must_  run- he can’t seem to move. can’t seem to stop staring.

 _those were meant for you_ , whispers vex, on the wind, nocking an arrow, and he knows she’s right.

he looks up, and she’s there, bow raised, haloed silver and beautiful in the full moon. for a flicker of a moment, she looks like vax, so much like vax he can’t breathe - and then she is vex again, but twisted, ruined. death coils around her, a heavy embrace he’s intimately, painfully familiar with, but she wears it as a cloak, not a noose- bears its touch like the passionate caress of a new lover- it’s all wrong, so very _wrong_ -

vex-as-a-briarwood smiles - smiles _wide_ , mouth a gaping, toothless maw and the flesh on her face slipping, dripping, melting like wax on the wings of icarus too close to the sun - and whispers, _it should have been you_.

he knows she’s right about that, too.

the arrow strikes true, through his throat, and he chokes, gasps- looks down, and vax is no longer dead on the ground, but cassandra, riddled with holes from the arrows, the empty spaces in her filled with black-blue feathers. he blinks, and cassandra is alive, arrows in a line down her back like spines, and cradling the broken body of a raven in her hands. she looks up at him, rotting, as her briarwood sister had been, and lifts the raven’s carcass to her mouth-

he chokes, and gasps, and drowns in the red blood that pours down over his eyes even as it fills his throat.

vax waits by the side of the pool - patiently, quietly, alone. there is no room for anything else, in the Raven Queen’s domain. death, She has shown him, is patient (it waits), is quiet (the dead make no noise), is alone (in the end, my paladin, everyone is so _very_  alone). he is no longer afraid of these things. he is no longer _afraid_.

when percy surfaces, thrashing through the blood,  vax reaches out- grabs him- hands in his hair- and forces him back under.

it’s easy enough to do, though it shouldn’t be. percy’s clothing is heavy with blood, dragging him down, and he doesn’t fight. doesn’t resist. vax holds him under, holds him _deep_ , pushes him down as far as he’ll go - and he sinks like a stone. like a corpse, with the weight of its sins manacled around one ankle.

death clings to percy, after all, like flies to something rotten. all vax is doing is helping the dead to return to where they belong.

it’s easy, and simple, and vax screams at himself in hollow, empty horror as he holds percy an arm’s-length under the blood and drowns him in slow, steady minutes.

he blinks, and the hair under his hands turns abruptly orange through the blood, turns red, turns the colour of autumn and forest fires and the sky half-way through a mid-summer sunset-

he recoils.

stumbling to his feet, he staggers backwards, stained bloody up to the elbows, smeared with gore. it spatters the floor with each step back he takes, dripping off him in heavy droplets, and he stands there and _shakes_  he watches keyleth’s rot-bloated body float to the surface of the pool.

he watches, and watches, and feels… he is unsure what he feels, because the horror is everywhere now, all-encompassing, and he thinks that might be the same thing as feeling nothing at all.

percy steps up behind him, white-haired and white-skinned and _cold_ , all the way through. touches his neck gently, oh so gently. tips his head to one side. whispers, _we were made for death, you and i. we were made for Her_. his footprints trail behind him, a line of damning red. his fingers are cold. his hands are cold. vax feels it as if it were his own, every inch of it, freezing from the inside out as if those death-chill fingers were sunk right into his sternum.

across the room, the Raven Queen cradles vax-as-a-child in Her arms, bows Her head, and kisses his brow with porcelain lips. She is silent, and Her touch is gentle, and vax-as-a-child does not cry.

vax-as-a-man does, though - quietly, because the dead make no noise, and neither does he. he stands in the house of the Raven Queen, and feels the tears roll cold and soundless down his cheeks as percy’s lips find his neck, and percy’s teeth find his veins, and the blood spills out in endless, rolling waves that swallow them both whole beneath the tide.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a result of [renardroi's prompting](http://sparxwrites.tumblr.com/post/147152023929/hey-baby-talk-to-me-about-weird-nightmare), and they then wrote [a wonderful companion piece](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7447141) for it, which you should go read too. The title's drawn from the X Ambassadors song of the same name, which is (one of) my go-to songs for this pair of angsty walking disasters.


End file.
